oxygen and prevented deterioration. The sal
vors found it difficult to remove the clay, but
when it was gone, they had unearthed some
thing resembling a time capsule-a cross sec
tion of the myriad supplies traveling to a
frontier fort in the mid-1800's.
Some people up there in Fort Benton a cen
tury ago were living very well! I saw fur hats
and bottles of French champagne; canned
oysters and peaches (page 396), bolts of silk
-and
case after case of Dr. J. Hostetter's
Celebrated Stomach Bitters.
Stomach bitters? Ronald Switzer, director
of the conservation laboratory, grinned at
my reaction. "We have about 780 gallons of
bitters here," he said. "It still has a rather po
tent alcoholic content. More than 30 percent.
But nobody samples it. The maker also put
in strychnine and belladonna!"
Why, I wondered, would 780 gallons of
stomach bitters be shipped to the western
wilderness? Was the labeling simply a way
to avoid paying liquor taxes? Or maybe it
was a ruse to sidestep the law against selling
alcohol to Indians.
Cargo for Gourmets and Pioneers
In any event, the laboratory director is
faced with an embarrassment of riches. "We
have more than two million items here," Mr.
Switzer told me. "Most are still stored in
plastic bags to keep them from drying out
until we can get around to preserving them.
The job will take about three years. Perish
able items, such as food, get top priority now."
He pointed to some ancient jars of peaches.
"Have you tasted those?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not on your life! We
don't even handle those without gloves, be
cause of the danger of botulism."
Not all the Bertrand's cargo was gourmet
fare. There were hobnail boots, sod-cutting
plows, candles to light a trapper's hut. Look
ing around that laboratory storeroom, I
began to realize how rugged life could be in
the western wilderness a century ago.
(Continued on page 406)
KODACHROME N.G.S.
the Lewis and Clark expedition struggled upriver
in 1804: "Saw a verry large wolf on the Sand bar
this morning walking near a gange of Turkeys...
Deer to be Seen in every direction....
399